Anke Grefte was born in Enschede on May 12th 1980. She moved to Oldenzaal in 1989 where she finished her secondary school (Twents Carmellyceum) in 1998. Next, she started Civil Engineering at Delft University of Technology. She did an internship in Australia on cleaning of distribution mains and graduated in 2005 with a masters thesis entitled "Behaviour of particles in a drinking water distribution network; test rig results". For this thesis Anke was awarded the Gijs Oskam award for best young researcher. In January 2006, she started her Ph.D. research on the removal of Natural Organic Matter (NOM).